Summary Of Bartolome De Las Casas

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In “The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies,” Bartolome De Las Casas uses his discoveries and writings as a way to show the readers the reality of how the Native Americans were being taken advantage of in some of the most appalling ways. Before the author had published his writings he was as much of a participant, in using and taking advantage of the Native Americans, as the rest of the Spaniards. It wasn’t until later that his views changed, and he realized that the way those innocent Native Americans were being treated was awful and unfair. Bartolome De Las Casas and his published work show the injustice acts towards the Native Americans from the Spaniards. Las Casas uses his writing to show many examples of the appalling…show more content…
They thought so little of the Indians that even their lives and families was a joke to them. They would place bets and make the killings out to be some sort of game. They had no remorse and to them all of the Indians were worthless, women, men, and even the children, did not get spared. A vivid example of the killings and how they treated it in Las Casas writing is, “They laid bets as to whom with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in tow or could cut off his head or spill his entrails with a single stroke of the pike” (40). Las Casas writes about the Spaniards and calls them Christians in this article, but after reading this and seeing the horrendous things that they did to the Indians, I doubt they would seriously be considered Christians. Another example on how Las Casas writes about how he saw the Spaniards killing the Indians would be, “They took infants from their mothers’ breast, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil!’”(40). this passage shows the true feelings of how the Spaniards thought the Indians to be. They thought of them as “devil”, the kids were killed and they thought they were doing the right thing in doing those

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